


The Name's Arthur

by aisle_one



Category: Inception (2010), Mysterious Skin (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Prostitution, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 18:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1194420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aisle_one/pseuds/aisle_one
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Pettare Attriti Smith McCormick to Neil McCormick to Paul (for a month) to Arthur, when he and Eames meet and Eames pays him a thousand for a night, or - Mysterious Skin meets Pretty Woman (sort of).</p><p>__</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hi. My name's Petare Atrriti Smith McCormick. No, that wasn't a mistake. You read that right. Pettare. Attriti. Don't bother looking them up in a name book. They don't mean shit. Pettare isn't a repurposed version of Peter. And, no, Attriti doesn't have Celtic fucking origins. 

I was decided over a drunken game of scrabble, or so the story went. Ma was an _independent soul_ a.k.a. kooky as shit, and Ta - as _Ta! See you later!_ , from the guy who hiked it a month after I was born - was a bastard, inebriated or sober. The scrabble board was set on Ma's still swollen post-baby bump. They passed a bottle of tequila between them. It served a dual purpose: curb the after-birth pains and celebrate. Glory be, a child was born! Oh, blessed day! Sans dictionary, they were brilliant. PETTARE intersected WEED, on top of a triple word square. 

Later, Ma would claim that it originated from an ancient Mayan dialect, and it meant sun and Greek beauty, later evolving to slang for potato skins with extra bacon. For serious, look it up on Urban Dictionary. _No shit_ , you're thinking, that woman was high. Yep. She grew it and sold it and gave it out like pennies fallen out of her pocket, endless supply. Attriti, she said through an exhaled cloud of pungent smelling smoke, was derivative of attrition, and it earned her eighty-two points on the scrabble board, with the the "tt" snugged up under "xx," thereby resulting in the words "xt." As in: _ex_ and _it_. You just got to sound it out. Attrition made Ma melancholy and crave for apple pie. A totally American combination and she wanted her boy at least a quarter patriotic - a secondary goal, hence the second placing - an ally for things worth protesting for, like weed and pennies. So. Attriti, then.

Them were the good ol' days, tales as tall as Paul Bunyan told over a breakfast of stale Frosted Flakes, before Ma checked herself into an inpatient program. Weed, indeed, was a gateway drug, portal to heroin. But she kicked it. In your face, CPS, and I was yanked out of foster care and returned to home sweet home. That stint was brief, briefer than the one with coach, and the one with my English teacher, freshman year in high school - _you can call me, Selby._ Said right before he unzipped me, his nose at my crotch, and inhaled.

 

_

 

Problem was that people didn't hear the dick in my name. Like Pat, on SNL. Is it a he? A she? A he-she? Or they thought a jokester was having one on them. Petare? Attriti? What the fuck? The teachers' faces, the pronunciations - _pure gold._ But in seventh grade, I made an executive decision. "Look," I said to Mr. Bloomsbury, hands out and pragmatic. "Just call me Neil. Everyone does." Nobody did. But Mr. Bloomsbury was grateful. The scrunched up worry in his face melted in relief as he nodded in vigorous agreement. Okay, okay then, Neil.

Neil: deriving from the Gaelic name _Niall_ , as in Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 4th-century Irish king. Appropriated by the Vikings in the early Middle Ages, Niall evolved to _Njal_ , and transmitted to England and Scotland, where it earned a modern, sleek, simple gloss. 

_Neil._ Good enough.

Neil stuck. Like Ma's early habit of doling out weed, I didn't hesitate giving away the name. "Neil," I said to the pizza shop when I called in for a delivery. "My name's Neil. Ask for Neil." Same to the barber who shaved my head the summer I turned fourteen while I pretended not to cry. "Neil," I said in a small, uncertain voice, when he asked for my name. The pal-it-up-through-the-torture technique. But it was the quickest route to evicting the lice. 

Right, _Neil_ , expelled in a shuddering breath. That was a john, Stewie, a Canadian transport temporarily lodging with relatives, bored out of his skull and horny. He tipped over my regular fifty-for-a-blow. Next stint he offered a hundred above the set price, plus tip. "If you let me..." I turned over, dutiful slut. This was after Brighton Beach, and I was home. My yearly pilgrimage to the holy land. The bed in the Motel Six vibrated for a quarter. The request wasn't my usual and I knocked my knees together trying to keep them straight and from shaking. The rattling traveled up to my teeth, to my white-knuckled grip on the bedsheets. Easy now, Stewie petted me like a spooked horse. Easy...

 

_ 

 

The swings and slide, the sandbox. Relics of a time outgrown. New York City hailed for my return. 

Five years passed in a blink.

 

_

 

I stood barefoot on a balcony, a cement barrier separating me from a forty-six floors fall. Advertisements on billboards flashed in the distance, neon lights dancing around them. Noise from the jammed streets wafted up, but thinly, inconsequential, as if they leaked from a parallel universe to cast a surreal glow. Up here, the air tasted clean, untainted and scent-free. Up here, misery was optional. If I tended toward spoiling, it was something I could get used to.

Camel Special Lights 100s, with a special after-taste. Nasty as rimming a rancid ass. The ass and the cigarettes, both courtesy of my last john, a regular. The fifty pack of Camels had been wrapped in a brown grocery bag, shoved toward me on the dirty sheets: "Here, sugar. Merry Christmas." I lit one. Dragged in a long breath, let it collect in my lungs for a good soiling.

"That shit will kill you," a sultry, accented voice murmured in my ear. I jumped. He chuckled. Arms roped thick with muscles circled my waist. Squeezed tight. A boa constrictor suffocating its prey. A tiny rabbit. Bugs Bunny. The visual flashed in, flashed out. I fought the urge to flinch away. Forced myself to go boneless, accommodating. "Arthur, is it?" he asked. It was. I was trying it on. Last month it had been "Paul." Paul from Colorado, who grew up on a ranch pining to be and be fucked by a modern-day John Wayne. Assless chaps for a night. The lap dance had been extra.

Arthur: spun from the tales of lore, inspired by myth. Of Celtic origin. King Arthur and his Round Table of knights. Legendary. Heroic. Imbued with wisdom and dignity.

This Arthur, evolved from Neil - _nay_ , separate from him - roamed. A gypsy, with a past shrouded in mystery. Not a whore by trade or circumstance. Arthur chose this life. He was a pioneer. An anthropologist for the common man. Self-taught, he prioritized experience, a necessity to inform his mission: to excavate, to mine for truth, with the distant goal of elevating sex workers to a dignified status.

Yeah, right.

 

_

 

I nodded. Yep, the name's Arthur. 

"Eames," Eames said, though the reintroduction was unnecessary. Name, height, hair color. Mole on the right cheek. The sharp tang of canned sardines lingering on a trick's breath. I had learned how to catalogue details, make them stick. At a lineup, when a whore got lucky with a cop who actually cared, remembering might get a perp more than a night in a holding cell. Dan the Man, with the thick, studded platinum band on his wedded finger, up, up my asshole with no lube. It was Act Two following the backhand from Chicago - that's how far I saw it coming. Sent the cigarette flying out of my mouth and me flopping like a ragdoll on the bed. The cigarette survived the assault, tip of it glowing, turned to a menace burned out inside my thigh. I had jerked back.

I jerked forward. Eames had a hand between my legs, scraping at the memory of a blister long healed. The pain had dulled, but a faint scar remained. He stroked there. I shivered, pretended it was from the cold, then from pleasure, and forced out a moan. He fondled my balls. 

"May I?" he asked, fingering my hole, playing at the leftover slick. It slithered down my thighs slimy and viscous. 

I bit back a retort to his question. As if he required my permission, as if this - the edge of his thumb now, insinuating a pass - hadn't been pre-arranged, negotiated into the bundle deal. A thousand for the night. But he had manners, this one. An _after you_ , earlier, as he had held his car door open for me. A Lotus Exige for the fancy pants in the tailored suit. And, later, herding me into his penthouse suite. _After you,_ at the threshold, where I had paused, gaping like a fish floundering on land. Lush carpeting. A fireplace. Baby grand in the corner. A dining table that sat six. A fucking living room. _I_ didn't have a living room. He strode past me, brisk and uncompromising. A man used to getting his way.

"Fuck," I gasped. Two fingers screwed in, rubbing at the anterior wall of my rectum. At my last medical exam, follow-up check on a tear, the doctor had talked me through it with a guided tour: and, here, lies your prostate - yes, there, exactly where Eames had his fingers tapping out a rhythm. A guttural moan tore from my throat. Honest, stripped of artifice. I couldn't fake it, not the way my body bowed as I collapsed against the balustrade, or the push back, my hips on autopilot, as I bore down on Eames's fingers, my hole hungry, angled for each stuttered swipe. 

He stretched me open. Gaping loose, breath knocked from my lungs, an avalanche erupted in my brain. Contents rattled, crashed and cracked open. Memories like ghosts rising from the dead. I whined, bleeding and broken another time, bleeding into the now, a parallel universe co-existing with this one. Concrete scraped under my palm. I flexed my hand, grip weakening. "No," I cried out softly. Too softly. Maybe. He didn't hear me.

Eames hauled me up, free arm bound heavy and tight around my chest. His fingers fluttered, orchestrated a song and dance that made me writhe against him. Then his cock, nestled along his fingers. Thrust on a high note -

I came, bucking in his arms like a rabid animal. Like an epileptic in the throes of a seizure. Like I wanted it. Like I had asked for it. Like I had asked for this - this life. This grand eternal moment. 

Blink out.

Blink in.

I shook and shook and shook. In bed, minutes later, carried there like a child, wrapped up like a human burrito, I continued to shake.


	2. Chapter 2

I dreamed of ice cream. Chocolate fudge, two scoops on a sugar cone. The alien handed it to me. It had huge, bulging eyes: _here you go, partner,_ with a pat on the head. It reached for my hand. We walked to the spaceship, corralled and glowing in the baseball field. Up, up, up the stairs - I hopped. Watch it. Be careful. Lights flashed in the interior, set up like an arcade. Pac Man in a corner. Space invaders in another. In the center, an elaborate train set looped multiple levels, through tunnels and trees, in between miniature skyscrapers. A miniature man waved out of a window. _Tick tock, tick tock._ A grandfather clock sprang up next to me. The cuckoo flung out: _let's play a game...let's play a game...let's play a game._ The alien returned. When did it leave? It wore a baseball cap. Feathery mustache above its thin upper lip. Ready, champ? It curled a long, bony finger and urged me forward - come, come this way.

 

_

 

I woke in a cold sweat, hyperventilating. My ass was throbbing and I stank of spunk. The blankets had skimmed off my body and were pooled at my feet. Eames's hand nestled at my groin, cupping my flaccid cock. His eyes were open, assessing me. "Bad dream?" he asked. I shook my head and shrugged off his concern. He let me. The heat intensified when he sidled up, nullifying the space separating us. His mouth opened on my cheek, slid down to my ear, my neck. The nerves sizzled under my skin. I dropped my head back, allowed him to feast, tamped down on lingering panic. This was fine. This was normal. 

Over Eames's shoulder, the clock blinked 6:42. Sun should be up, but the blackout curtains tempered the time, prolonged the feeling of suspended reality. I sank into it, willed away resistance and welcomed the weight of the moment anchoring me to the present. I went pliant, liquid, velvet on satin, soft, soft as Eames's hand skating my ribs, the plush knot of his tongue pressed in the hollow of my neck. I could go on pretending. The birds twittered outside. It was almost like being in a Disney movie.

Eames's hand nudged behind my balls, prodded at my hole. "Sore?" he asked. I shrugged. Whatever. Spread my legs for easier access. Tip of his thumb caught at the rim - I held my breath - and withdrew. He patted my ass. Slung an arm over my chest and fondled a nipple. "Tiny thing," he murmured. "Tiny like you." He rolled it between his fingers. Pinched and relaxed. I shivered. A brow lifted - inquiring minds wanted to know. _Yeah._ I sighed. I liked it. But I liked his mouth more; I arched my back and offered myself. On cue, he bent his head and suckled me.

"Fuck," I groaned. Eames's mouth was a sweet, wet furnace. His tongue snaked in and out. He shifted me on top of him, positioned on my hands and knees. His mouth followed my ascent, shooting up to chase my tits. They felt thick and swollen. My mind buzzed with pleasure. My cock hung heavy and hard between my legs. "Yeah, yeah," I chanted, "yeah," as Eames began to milk it. The skin rippled in his hand. Pre-cum leaked onto Eames's stomach. I turned my face into my shoulder, muffled a curse, muffled the nausea, the bloom of sick, awful remembrance. _Go away._ A twist - clever spin in the wrist, and I was pitching forward, falling on my elbows, crushing Eames's face to my chest. The earth spun and shattered, and I quaked in the aftermath.

I reached for Eames's cock. Bleary with post-orgasm haze, it took several pulls before I realized it was soft, sticky. I removed my hand, stared at Eames. "You came," I said. 

Eames laughed. His sweaty hand slid down my torso, glided over my hip. Squeezed. "Apparently it was enough to have you gyrating on top of me. You're an old man's wet dream."

I snorted. "You're not old." In or around coach's age, in fact. 

"Much older than you."

Much, I wanted to say, was a relative term. Instead, I said, "If you're measuring in life experience, you might as well count mine in dog years."

His eyes raked over me, landing on a trail of splotchy bruises, winding from below my armpit to the center of my back. If I wanted to fall back on stereotype I could have joked: _I tripped._ Wasn't watching where I was going and fell down the stairs. Didn't think he'd appreciate it though, not with the look on his face. I half expected the morning-after guilt that some johns got. Pensive and reconsidering. Like, on second thought, let's rewind some. As if backtracking would absolve them from having used me. 

They liked to offer advice: _You're young. You've got potential._ As a crack addict maybe. 

Or hit me with a barrage of questions: 

\- _How did you get here?_  
\- Don't you have family?  
\- Do they know?

I lied:

\- I do it for kicks. Or for the extra money - college is expensive. So is cocaine, and sometimes I played a junkie.  
\- Nope. Yeah, a dog. Define family? They're in Paraguay.  
\- Hell no. Or, yes, they do, but we don't talk about it. Or, yes, they do, and I learned it from my mom; she still tricks at a corner back home. 

But all Eames said was, "Touche." Relieved, I reclined back against the headboard. I nudged his fat, spent cock with my foot. It looked like a giant, comatose earthworm. I told him so. He smacked me lightly on the hip. "Flattery will get you everywhere." A quick, chaste peck on my knee, then he rolled over and sprang up. "Wish I could languish in bed all day, darling, but I've got places to go, people to see. Stay if you like." He tossed me the room service menu. "Order some breakfast."

Was he serious? "You're going to leave me here alone? What if I root through your shit?" Steal a little extra. Order up five weeks of food. Smash the glass table in the fancy living room because I feel like it.

"What if you do?" he said, hands on his naked hips. He picked up his wallet off the nightstand and thumbed through it. A stack of green flung out in a pretty scatter beside me. I counted. Two thousand dollars. I stared up at Eames. "That's to get you started and here - " The wallet soared and landed on top of the bills. "Have at it." I picked it up and peeked inside. Gold cards. Crisp hundreds. Glory, but this man was loaded. Five-hundred dollars - in a single issue. Carefully, I pulled it out. I had never seen one before. Didn't know they actually existed. Like unicorns. "Take it," Eames said, his voice pitched lower, almost tender. "Consider it an advance."

"You want to see me again?" I asked, rubbing the five between my fingers. It felt real enough. 

Eames hooked his fingers under my chin, tilted my face up. He traced my lips with his thumb. "I enjoy you. Take my card from the wallet. Ring me at the end of the week."

An hour later, Eames was showered, shaven and smelled of expensive cologne. I watched him pad out of the bathroom with a towel slung around his hips. His ass jiggled underneath it. In layers, he dressed: undershirt, a button-up, a pair of well-tailored slacks, an equally well-tailored suit jacket. Tie slung around his neck. "I can get that," I offered, stabbed my fork into a stack of pancakes and set aside the breakfast tray. He watched me approach. My long, nude, lanky body a sliver of his. 

"This one," I said, tugging on the narrow strip of the tie and looping it over the wide one, "is called the Eldredge." Eames snaked a hand down and kneaded my cock. In minutes, the tie was knotted and I was fully erect.

"Did your grandpa teach you that?" Eames asked, unzipping. He turned me, bent me over the sink. His hand hovered under my mouth. "Spit," he commanded, so I did. 

"Yeah," I lied.

"Yeah?" he said. He breached me. I grunted.

"He taught me when I was eight," I panted out. He taught me lots of things.


End file.
